To no longer donate to charities

[Foronenightonly01]

Issues akin to those being reported in the papers of ‘One Young World’ mean that when you give money now, more often than not it seems to go into the pockets of profiteers. I do still help out locally giving my time that I can spare to projects in my area and I’ll give extra in scenarios where I know exactly to whom my cash is going. I’m so saddened that people are being conned to lining the pockets of wealthy greedy pretend do-gooders - more than anything else recently this has made me realise how f@cked our Country is. So bloody sad.

Often they do need very central offices. It helps attract the most qualified people, needs to be easily accessible for donors, politicians, finance institutions, embassies, other organisations etc etc. I think people underestimate the amount of schmoozing that has to be done by big charities. Getting stuff done on a large scale is hard! When you need coordination both in house and with multiple outside agencies location is important.

Yes. I know

My point is - organisations need front line staff to deliver services to the clients AND they need admin staff to support this function.

When people complain about the admin costs, they often don't appreciate that the service can't be delivered with the admin staff. And they don't appreciate how difficult it is to allocate costs.

Charities have volunteers. They have a volunteer manager. Is her salary admin or is it going on delivering charitable activities?

I don’t believe a charity worker should be paid at a lower rate than a peer in the corporate sector

But lots of people do. They think that everyone - from the person running the local charity shop, to the researcher in a laboratory, to rhe receptionist or Chief Exec - should earn nothing. Because charity.

It's such a skewed way of thinking.

Okay, take Marie Curie as an example. Total income- £170m, 60% of that in donations, 40% NHS funding. £130m went to front line services, that's almost 77% going to nursing in home or hospice care, research and support services. Or NSPCC- 84% of their funding from donations, with 77% going to services, including counselling, helplines, research etc..
Just do your homework before donating.

Yes, you're right. I think a lot of people think that charities should be run exclusively by volunteers. However, I don't see all those people queuing up to offer their services full time for free. It's hard enough for most charities to even recruit trustees who have appropriate skills to offer for free, and the time commitments for trustees are typically quite minimal. Quite how people imagine that it would be possible to get an army of skilled volunteers with ample time and the motivation to manage complex projects and services effectively, to ensure compliance with legal requirements, to take responsibility for safeguarding etc....I honestly don't know what planet people are living on.

I've seen charities that were running using solely volunteers or almost solely, and it wasn't good - people had their 'pet project' they'd work on, usually not coordinated with what anyone else was doing and often involving a clique of people who didn't communicate well outside their clique. Loads of effort put into tiny fundraising events that would raise less than £100. Church-based but without a vicar in post or with one vicar for multiple churches so legal obligations to meet for safeguarding, maintaining historic building etc but with very little oversight.

Even something as simple as having an admin person in an office for 3 hours every weekday meant anyone ringing up got a consistent answer to questions about weddings, booking halls etc. That then increased income because the hall was let out more efficiently and frequently. She could coordinate annual maintenance checks on buildings, keep records of who had DBS done when.

There was a lot of moaning about the cost of employing this person but the alternative was a mixture of volunteers manning the office, some without computer skills, lack of consistency, sometimes no cover so office closed at short notice etc.

I've also seen volunteers spend hours keeping an ancient, donated, printer going to produce weekly newsletters and similar because it would be 'too expensive' just to contract out the printing to a local company and collect it every Friday. None of them even had a clue MailChimp existed.

Similarly, the charity shop where I volunteer is in a building which is falling to bits. Literally. Every time it rains, we flood. We have had to deal with raw sewage leaking from the loos in the cafe next door (in the same building). We had serious damp, black mould in the back shop, no ventilation. Inefficient old storage heaters which mean it's either boiling hot, or freezing cold and no insulation.

The building surveyor came out and said the whole little extension at the back of the shop needs to be torn down and rebuilt. New guttering, new air bricks added for ventilation. Cost estimated at £80k - shared between us, and the other 2 small businesses in the building. Nobody wants to pay that amount, the charity knows how it would be criticised in the press. So instead they told the manager to go to Tesco and buy a couple of bottles of Cillit Bang to deal with the black mould, and hire a special Vax thing to remove the flood water from the back shop.

Major charities, I understand and accept that it costs money to keep them going. But a quick look on the charity commission website tells me that Children in Need has 14 employees being paid from £60,000 to £140,000 a year. Admittedly the ones in the higher end are less in number than the lower end but still.
It also amazes me that they ( major charities) keep multimillions in the bank . Yes have assests but do we really give the odd £10 -£20 for it to go into a savings pot ?

It also amazes me that they ( major charities) keep multimillions in the bank

Part of the reserves are in case the charity goes into administration - so it needs a minimum amount of money for redundancy costs, salaries in case funding dries up.

Part of them I would imagine with big charities is to ensure that they can keep funding projects if donations dry up.

And if there is an emergency, then it has the money available to fund emergency aid quickly.

But a quick look on the charity commission website tells me that Children in Need has 14 employees being paid from £60,000 to £140,000 a year

What do you think those employees do and what do you think they should be paid?

Same here. Volunteering your time is really valuable.

Of course charities keep money in the bank. When there's floods in Pakistan or an earthquake in South America, the money needs to be there to charter aircraft, buy tents, food packs, water purification tablets and get them to the disaster zone. Plus there is also the argument that canny investment of money "in the bank" actually pays interest/dividends which means there's more money to go around in the long run.

Unless you're one of those people who thinks disaster response logistics can be handled by Brenda, a retired hairdresser who does the till on a Monday afternoon?

It's nice to see that a load of you think that not only should volunteers give their time for free, but they should also pay for their own equipment, occasional travel, training and office space costs. Lovely.

I think charities should be measured on value for money, outcomes etc.

Some charities have a lot of money in donations, deliver a lot of charitable work - but are the outcomes worth the money spent and the donations.

But that of course is hard to measure with charities like the BHF, who fund research. Because the outcomes are hard to measure and the impact can take a long time to be felt.

There are charities who do spend a lot of money but is it being spent effectively?

It's not about the admin or the salaries. It's about what they actually deliver and is the money donated making a difference?

I think Water Aid is a great charity. A simple idea. Clean water for all. And such powerful outcomes. I am sure they probably spend a lot on admin, salaries etc - but the outcomes are so good.

The charity I worked for kept one year’s running costs as a reserve. They own several hundred horses, either out on loan or being rehabilitated across their centres, and it’s not like they’d just suddenly be able to dispose of them all if they went bust. They would need time to wind down and find them new homes in a worst case scenario. Charities are required to maintain reserves to make sure that they can wind down their services properly and not leave their service users in a mess if they have to close.

@cakeorwine

You are jumping on everyone who is not painting a charity in the best light .
Care to tell us if you are involved in a charity and at what level ?

Jumping on?

Or reminding people that there is much more to a charity than people realise.

And if you read my posts, you will see that I have criticised charities. As I said, I applied for a job at a charity. The salary was very good - especially for the role. It did seem to have more staff than needed in the team I was applying for - and for what they did. More research seemed to indicate that it was generous in its salaries and the number of staff it employed.

I had NCT antinatal classes. NCT are a charity but the classes aren’t free. I thought the teacher would be a volunteer but they get paid.

@cakeorwine I agree it would cost a fair bit to run a charity-full time staff, infrastructure, appeals, travel, accountants, charitable donating to recipients.

However, think a charity would need to work very hard to persuade me of the need for a £150k salary. "Can bring a lot of money in", the usual reason, doesn't cut it for me. And I doubt is always borne out.

I love your username. I say it often!

I'm on the board of trustees for a small museum charity and on paper our reserves look healthy. Thank god they are though, because our fuel bills have rocketed, and it's looking like Arts Council funding might be in doubt in the next round. We have enough to keep the show on the road for the leaner times that are coming. I'd all that sound financial management.

And I'm not paid! But the curator and assistant are, and we also employ a number of school leaver interns, giving great opportunities to bright kids in a small town well away from the bright city lights to get a head start in a career in the Arts.
And it's a wonderful little museum!

The amount they spend on overheads is a terrible measure of charity effectiveness. theconversation.com/nonprofits-may-need-to-spend-about-one-third-of-their-budget-on-overhead-to-thrive-contradicting-a-rule-of-thumb-for-donors-188792

Well - that's a discussion about attracting the right staff with the right skill set to do a job that gets value for money.

And the motivation for doing the job.

Which is big thing in the charity sector - setting appropriate salaries to get the right people - who may not be motivated by money, but who do still need to survive - without taking the piss and getting hammered in the media and on web forums.

I don't see an issue with the teachers getting paid, personally, nor with charities that charge for some of their services. Being a registered charity doesn't mean that everyone has to do everything for free, and frankly, the quality of a lot of charity-run services would go down if it did. The point is simply that, unlike private businesses, charities are not allowed to make a profit. Any surplus from their activities is therefore re-invested to further the charitable purpose for which it was established, rather than going into shareholders' pockets.